Is the USA totally corrupt?

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August 29, 2008
Court: Beef Exporters Can't Test for Mad Cow Disease

Beef exporters are banned from testing their cattle for mad cow disease without approval from the government, which has exclusive control on test kits, a divided federal appeals court panel said today.

A Kansas-based exporter, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, seeking to test its cattle to minimize public fear, challenged Department of Agriculture regulations that block corporations from buying and using kits to test for mad cow disease. There is no cure and no treatment for the neurological disease. It’s 100 percent fatal.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in a 2-1 opinion, upheld USDA control of the kits. Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson and Judith Rogers sided with the government; Chief Judge David Sentelle dissented.

“Any measures Creekstone can take to reassure foreign customers would be good for the economy,” says Creekstone’s attorney, Russell Frye, a solo practitioner in the District. Creekstone claims its business has suffered due to fears of mad cow disease around the world.

In South Korea, for example, thousands of protesters recently filled the streets challenging their government after it lifted a ban on beef imported from the United States. Creekstone sold beef to South Korea buyers.

The USDA says mad cow disease is not contagious from one cow to another. The first case in the United States was reported in 2003 and prompted a recall of more than 10,000 pounds of raw beef. There is a link between eating tainted beef and a rare, fatal brain disorder in humans called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

USDA regulation of testing kits falls under the Virus-Serum-Toxin Act, which Congress enacted in 1913. The law gives the USDA control over the sale of products intended for the “treatment” of domestic animals.

Testing an animal for a disease does not fall under the “treatment” language of the act, Frye argued. But the court held differently, noting that the law defines treatment to include the diagnosis of disease in animals.

Sentelle in dissent wrote that the USDA has given itself too much power. “I find unpersuasive the Department’s arguments that a product with no other use than the diagnosis of an untreatable and invariably fatal disease is a form of ‘treatment.’ ”

There is a two- to eight-year incubation period for mad cow disease. Because most cattle slaughtered in the United States are less than 24 months old, the most common mad cow disease test is unlikely to catch the disease, the appeals court noted. If the government does not control the tests, the USDA is worried about beef exporters unilaterally giving consumers false assurance.

Creekstone’s case is not entirely over. The appeals court remanded to the U.S. District Court to resolve whether the USDA’s refusal to let Creekstone test its cattle is arbitrary and capricious.

Posted by Mike Scarcella on August 29, 2008 at 04:26 PM in D.C. Courts and Government | Permalink

And see:

http://consumerist.com/5043831/mythbust ... rity-flaws

The whole capitalist system is set to benefit a minority not the majority, to expect this ideology to behave in any other way is foolish. Governments in our system are the means of control for the capitalist elite so of course the decisions of said government are often seem corrupt. In fact the sort of behaviour you are talking about is not corruption because this would infer that what is happening was not intended.

From wikipaedia - Corruption, when applied as a technical term, is a general concept describing any organized, interdependent system in which part of the system is either not performing duties it was originally intended to, or performing them in an improper way, to the detriment of the system's original purpose.

Hence by this definition no the US is not corrupt.

The goal and purpose of capitalism is to enrich the lives of a small percentage of the worlds population by whatever means they can get away with

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 31 Aug 2008, 8:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

One odd regulation by the FDA and subsequent ruling by the Courts does not make the entire government corrupt.

The government consists of thousands upon thousands of people. To make the assumption that every single one is corrupt is extremely foolish (just as foolish as to assume not one is corrupt).

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Correct. But to see corruption where none exists is just as blind. You made the assertion that the American government is wholly corrupt based on a single example involving just 2 small parts. The national government consists of dozens of agencies and almost a thousand separately elected individuals. If you include the state and local governments the number expands to tens of thousands of people who are all elected separately. To assume every single person involved is wholly corrupt and indifferent to the real needs of the people is a serious leap from just one incident.

To assume that a few honest individuals, or even a huge number of honest individuals who are powerless to direct the operations of a government that has sold itself to the highest bidder make a government that has repeatedly displayed frightful corruption, honest, is to be horribly unaware. I gave merely two recent examples. If you are interested, you don't have to do any digging to find many more.

Well all I can say is "who's at fault?"

Usually it's not just one party but all parties including ourselves. We've done more consuming that producing, I wonder how much debt will be in the future.

And the critical question is: Is there any way out of it? I don't see one at the moment.

Me neither.

I do not see a way out either.

Yes, the US is totally corupt...Not saying that other countries are not, however, I can honestly say that at least where I lived before people were NOT penalized for speaking their minds, people were not prosecuted for speaking their minds, there was no "terrorist" list that you were included in when you didn't agree with the government...

If you think the USA is capitalist, you are remarkably ignorant of what capitalism is. In a capitalist society, the government WOULD NOT CONTROL THIS TEST! Instead, it would be controlled by the free market, without government interference in its use other than to perhaps certify the test's quality--and even then probably not, in a capitalist society.

When have you been prosecuted for speaking your mind? What was the court date? What was the venue/jurisdiction?

Arguable, however, the issue is that if capitalist = free market, then no, the system is not set to benefit a minority but rather set up a market system that creates value for all participants, which arguably is what happens to some extent. The issue is that the system is that a free-market system is not designed to protect specific entrants but rather allow for all entrants to compete, in which case this is clearly corrupt.

Not of the free market though, and a market system has done wonders in transforming the world as should be practically undeniable.

As long as corruption is being discussed and the thread starter is a Finn then why did you leave out the Centre Party's Parliamentary leader Timo Kalli making a public point of not following a law he had voted for regarding reporting of the sources of political contributions of over 1700 euros last May Sand? Apparently there was no legal sanctions available as the law was written to force compliance. Was this a simple oversight on the part of Finnish politicians? Or was it deliberate corruption? It seems to have involved many members of Finlands ruling party. Remove the beam from your own eye as*hole. This glossing over of the scandal while using a single court ruling to indict the entire US as being totally corrupt smells like Euro trash America bashing. f**** you and the Reindeer you rode in on Sand. I don't give a f**** whether Europeans or Aussies like how some of us vote here in the USA or if any of you approve of how our Government is structured.

The people,
The govenment,\
or the land itself?